The other day, I mentioned my theory on Lena Dunham’s style, if we’re calling it that (“style”). I truly believe that most of what Lena wears – in street-style and on red carpets – is designed specifically to get her in the news, to get people to comment on her crappy style, to get people to insult her clothes so she can get attention and assume a victim posture. No one can pick out such unflattering clothes THAT consistently without knowing exactly what they’re doing. But I also saw the completely justified comments about “well, how *should* she dress for her figure?” Well, she’s pear-shaped, and there are literally millions of Google results for “how to dress if you’re pear-shaped.” The basic gist: A-line skirts and dresses, straight-leg or boot-cut pants, emphasize your smaller top half, etc. It’s not rocket science.
Still, you can make the argument that no woman has to dress to flatter her figure, no woman has to dress to be “sexy,” no woman has to want or need to “look good” or presentable when they walk out their door. I hear you on that too, but again, this is specifically about Lena. Lena who loves to be the center of attention. Lena who loves to be the most special snowflake around. Of course she’s dressing this way on purpose. Know how I know? Because she just wrote an essay for InStyle about how she “dresses like a baby” and she “peaked at 6.” You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Peaking at the age of 6: I peaked at the age of 6. Thirteen was awkward — I was shiny-faced, with bottom braces and bad highlights. But then again so was 30, with the misshapen news-anchor bob and tea-stained teeth…But 6 — with my blond hair, tanned skin, and purple leggings with matching bedazzled headband — was perfect. I was everything I’d ever wanted to be (formidably adorable), everywhere I ever wanted to go (my bedroom), and hanging with the hottest company in town (my parents). So, like the high school quarterback who can’t stop milling around the football field well into middle age, I have just continued to dress like a full-scale baby.
She knows her style is awful: “Rompers? Check. I’ve got dozens. Saggy-crotch harem pants? Those too. Blouses with Peter Pan collars and loose baby-doll shifts? I can’t buy enough. No matter how many times red-carpet blogs eviscerate my cutesy, well-meaning but ill-fitting outfits, I continue to draw from the same well. I just like how my body feels, knock-kneed and flat-footed, when I’m in clothes that might be more at home on a playground than at an actual play.
Her baby clothes are about comfort, but about something else too: “It was about more than comfort, though comfort was key. It was also about the power of subverting expectations. I could be sexy in a frilly white communionesque prom dress. I could critique a novel in a striped onesie. Nobody could tell me sh-t about politics when I was wearing my six-tiered minidress. I was the biggest, smartest baby on the block.
She projects a lot about feeling like she should look “sexy”: “When my career began to take off, I felt enormous pressure from parents, publicists, and pundits to start looking and acting like a real, live grown-up. The same thing I was celebrated for — my honesty and sense of self — was lambasted by those who felt celebrity (especially for women) meant a duty to appear camera-ready and probably sex-ready too…So I made a Z-line straight for the clothes that made me giggle. Lord, when pressed, I could even get Prada to put me in what was essentially a giant lace T-shirt for the Emmys. Everyone was complicit in my sick game.
Her recent style: “Through massive personal shifts, like my body’s betrayal and a desperately public breakup, my baby clothes stood by me. Before my hysterectomy, I wandered the halls of the hospital in a frilled purple lounge set. I spent my first night alone in stretch mustard shorts and a T-shirt that read, “I’m a very complicated child.” I plunged into early menopause in stars and stripes….Being an adult is hard. Might as well go back to when your look soared as high as your youthful heart.
She tells a story of how she recently tried to dress like an adult in slim-cut black trousers, a sweater and boots and then complained that the clothes hurt her and made her feel too grown up, so she just had to change into her baby stuff and put her hair in pigtails and go buy some candy. This whole essay was just… bad and awful and uncomfortable. Again, no woman should feel the need to dress for an audience. But that’s not Lena’s rationale: she’s totally dressing for an audience. Like almost everything Lena does, she’s performing her bad style for us. Baby-dressing is her performance art. And I’m just left wondering if she’ll ever grow the f–k up.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red, WENN.
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